Women in hot water offered way out
While in prison, a select few learn to operate boilers, earn certifications
WEST MEMPHIS — Samantha Resecker couldn’t believe where she was.
She tilts her head back now, eyes shut, and remembers her first arrest.
It was May 2016, and it was her first time in a jail cell. The felony charges — possession of cocaine and methamphetamine for distribution — led to a sentence she’s still serving in the East Central Arkansas Community Correction Center, a state-run facility for nonviolent female offenders.
Resecker, 37, lived in Conway and never went through formal job training. Before her first arrest, she’d been in court for traffic violations. She was married with a 10-year-old son, and fines that she wasn’t paying kept adding up until she was breaking the law more and more to stay out of jail and make ends meet.
“We tried to do extra things, and it didn’t work out so well,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh, her upbeat demeanor a sharp contrast to the frightened face in the mug shot on the ID badge she wears pinned to her yellow jumpsuit.
She shared an intake room with Sarah Lynn, a 31-yearold from Mountain Home who was arrested on similar charges. She’d been selling drugs to supplement her income as a seasonal secretary, to pay court fines for repeated offenses and to send child support for her two sons, ages 13 and 8.
“I had no stability,” Lynn said. “I had my own place, but I paid my own bills by selling drugs.”
After they’d finished prison orientation, prison construction and maintenance coordinator Chris Hunter offered them an opportunity, something to give them hope within the prison walls and that might serve them in the world outside once they are released.
State-run prison facilities for women offer few opportunities to become licensed in fields like welding and construction, skills the women could use later to get jobs.
But at the East Central lockup, inmates can learn to operate a boiler, the large tank that heats water for use in buildings such as schools, hospitals, paper mills and prisons.
The basement-level boiler room at the prison is hot and windowless, and the women working there have to shout to be heard over the hum of the two cylindrical machines. They work eight-hour shifts, with some starting before 5 a.m. and others working through the night.
Hunter volunteers to train the women and has done so since the boiler program began in late 2016. He handpicks inmates for the program, looking for the ones who follow the rules and who he thinks will be motivated
enough to get boiler operator jobs when they’re released.
Most of them lack confidence at the beginning of the training course. They barely speak or make eye contact, staring at the floor.
“They get beat down while they’re out there in the world,” Hunter said. “They’re told they’re nothing.”
He remembers walking Resecker and Lynn through the boiler room and seeing their faces change as they looked at the web of pipes and switches on the tanks.
“They were two of the newer residents that came in, walked down in that room and said, ‘I’ll never be able to learn this,’” he said.
During the first weeks of the course, Lynn and Resecker spent two hours each evening in the bunk beds of their shared cell, quizzing each other with flashcards. Soon, they were working the same shift.
“I’m stuck to her like glue,” Resecker said.
Now, they know how to take readings and make sure the boiler maintains a consistent temperature and water level. It isn’t hard, physical labor, but it requires constant attention.
“It’s like being a part of the well-oiled machine,” Resecker said.
They know how to assess problems based on the sound and movement in the pipes, and they know which switches will fix what, which measurement on the dial needs to be reached. They even helped Hunter rebuild one of the boilers.
When something is wrong, bells go off. They have 2-8 minutes to remedy the problem, knowing that they are responsible for the safety of all 350 inmates. The consequences can range from pipe damage to an explosion.
“You really learn when something goes wrong,” Lynn said with a laugh. “It can be quite an experience.”
Hunter hopes the skills his trainees gain within the prison walls will help them control their own lives when they leave.
“I don’t want them going to leave here and having to go home and depend on a guy,” Hunter said. “A lot of them take charges for the man, whatever their boyfriend’s doing. They don’t have to go home straight into what they left.”
Of the more than 5,000 inmates released from Arkansas Community Correction centers between 2008 and 2010, 51 percent were arrested again and 28 percent were reincarcerated, according to a report from the department. The goal of the centers’ job training programs is to reduce those numbers.
“There is a push to look at incarcerated offenders — how can we provide resources for incarcerated offenders to be successful?” East Central center director Phyllis Silas said. “If we give them the tools, that rate would be lower.”
Wages for boiler operators in Arkansas are about $24 an hour, more than twice those of a fast-food cook, according to 2016 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The training “will take us to a place to take care of ourselves, or not be dependent on the things that got us here,” Lynn said. “It’s a big thing.”
Women make up about 2 percent of boiler operators nationally, according to 2014 data from the U.S. Department of Labor. The Arkansas Department of Labor doesn’t keep track of how many of the state’s 6,720 licensed boiler operators are female, but Hunter knows from experience that it must be few. He worries that that — in addition to being ex-felons — will hurt the women’s job prospects.
When the first inmates had completed their on-the-job training hours, a state inspector who arrived to test them told Hunter that he had worked 15 years and never tested a woman.
“The look on his face told it all. He thought he was wasting his time,” Hunter said. “Even though they have that license, they’re still going to have to prove themselves.”
Resecker said she knows things will be difficult when she gets out. She plans to move back to her husband’s hometown and hopes the people who knew her before can see that she is more than her past decisions. Lynn said she is excited to build a resume and start job hunting.
“I’m going to leave here and be a boss,” Lynn said. “You might doubt me for two seconds, but I’ll show you.”